Recruitment
by Alias Adrianna
Summary: In which Maruko attempts to recruit a player, and runs into trouble along the way. Prequel of sorts to Strongest. mutant!AU, girl!Marco


She stands in the back, out of the way, and watches the fight, her eyes glowing faintly as she experiences the world at a pace much faster than the human twenty-four images a second. Her eyes see the world in hundreds and thousands of images a second, allowing her to see the slight nuances of movement that are lost to all those around her. And with this particular match, it is an ability she appreciates.

The two fighters in the ring appear equally matched at first glance. Both are easily over six feet and built like tanks, rippling with muscle as they trade blows that could break concrete. But the one she has her eye on is the one with black hair that trails like a mane over his shoulders and down his back, facial tattoos, and a scar on his forehead like the lacings on a football. He's the one that is going to win, she can see clearly; he's much faster, and in a contest where strength is almost equally matched - he's also just that little bit stronger - that speed gives him an edge.

At last, with a roar that she can only imagine as being the sound a dinosaur might make, the one with black hair sends the other crashing out of the ring. He stands for a moment, looking at the crumpled form, before snorting and turning away, breezing past the bumbling referee, who is tripping over himself trying to give the man his prize money.

But Gaou Rikiya has no interest in money, as she has garnered from her sources. He is interested solely in the fight, in the struggle and the triumph. And the harder, the better. His opponent gets up, and before the referee - whose power is an eye ability even weaker than her own, barely better than human vision and completely unsuited for subduing angry fighters - can interfere he launches himself at Gaou. Gaou merely reaches out his arm and twists, sending the other down with a bone-shattering blow the other fighter will take months to recover from. Another of the fighter's weird quirks - his penchant for obeying the rules, which involve no serious injuries in the ring but no longer apply outside of that small circle. As much of a musclebound idiot as he might look, a canny intelligence lurks behind those eyes.

Now all she has to do is convince him that playing American football would be much more interesting.

Moving from her place at the back, Maruko Rei drains her coke and slips out the side door to follow him, eyes fixed intently on his mane of hair as she picks up her pace. She's so intent on catching up to the other teen that she completely fails to notice that she's being followed until a hand reaches out and grabs her left wrist.

"Where're you going in such a hurry, sweetheart?" Some idiot with a bleached mohawk asks her, grinning to reveal teeth that probably haven't been properly acquainted with a toothbrush in years. "Slow down, relax. We'll show you a good time." A little voice in her head starts a steady mantra of 'This is bad, this is bad, thisisbadbadbad-' but Maruko grits her teeth and tries to keep her poker face.

"We have differing versions of a good time, I'd say," Maruko drawls back, attempting to free her wrist from his grasp as a motley collection of others - the rest of a gang, perhaps? - whistle and jeer. Up ahead, she can see Gaou's massive form disappear around the corner, and she's annoyed and frightened all at once. These idiots have just lost her a precious opportunity, and she's going to have to show her hand if the idiot holding her wrist doesn't let go.

Maruko hates having to waste her aces on morons, and she doesn't like her odds.

Then the bumbling blond moron tries to reel her closer, and she smashes the end of her coke bottle into his nose before he knows what hit him, using the element of surprise to help up the odds. He's probably never been on the receiving end of a glass coke bottle, or he'd have known to grab her other wrist instead. As it is, only the fact that she needs a clean record for football keeps her from applying enough force to kill him instantly.

The others are upon her then with shouts and weapons, and all she hears is the curses as she takes them down, her eyes allowing her to predict their movements before they're ever completed. Eventually, one of the thugs gets lucky and makes her lose her balance by fouling his foot up in hers, and she goes down, glass bottle flying out of her hand and shattering against the brick wall of the alley they're in.

Suddenly, she's staring at one half of a broken bottle as it comes speeding down towards her, and panic begins to set in, because this is not part of her plan, she _has_ no plan for _this_ -

And then the walls seem to shake with the force of a beast-like roar, and the sky is eclipsed by Gaou Rikiya. She's still staring dazedly up at him when he finally turns to peer down at her with something menacing in his eyes. Primal instinct tells her to lay still and play dead in the face of this terrifying predator, but the thought of having a force like _that_ on her team pushes her beyond her limits. She stands, brushing dust off her skirt and her jacket, and offers him a polite smile. "Thank you for your help. I'd -" She frowns, because he's already turned away from her and is starting to walk away. "Don't you know it's rude not to look at someone when they're talking to you?" She puts all of herself behind that sentence, all of her strength and desperation and hope and fear, willing him to _look at her_, because without him she has no chance, and by god, she's going to go down fighting even if she fails.

Miraculously, his head turns, inch by painful inch, and suddenly he's _looking right at her_, all of that frightening intensity she saw before focused like a laser beam that could pierce straight through her.

"Do that," he says, in a slow, rumbling voice, "again."

"What?" she asks, bewildered, because she doesn't think dropping down to her knees and praying is what he's looking for.

He answers her question with a blow that goes flying past her head as she activates her own abilities to keep herself from being on the receiving end of one of those inhumanly powerful blows. It's actually a fight to keep ahead of him, but she knows that if he catches her she'll be just as extinct as the dinosaur he reminds her of.

Maruko trips again, this time miscalculating the amount of weight her now-throbbing ankle can withstand. As she goes down Gaou's hand follows, and looking up at his fist soaring at her all she can think is _No_. It's a desperate, instinctive urge to survive, fueled by raw emotion and the very essence of her soul.

Maruko Rei wants to live, and when Gaou's hand comes to a screeching halt midair it looks like she's going to. His eyes are gleaming again, almost overflowing with a childish glee as he looks at her. "Are there others as strong as you?"

Maruko smiles, and stands up, brushing herself off before looking up at him. "Stronger, I'd say. So tell me, Gaou Rikiya - how would you like to play American football?"


End file.
